With improved treatment, many patients admitted with respiratory failure, heart disease, or acute circulatory failure (which doctors call septic shock) survive and stay for long weeks in intensive care. to be cared for. “But if this survival is accompanied by cognitive impairment, surviving is not enough,” said Dr. Molly Wagster, a neurologist at the American Institute of Aging, after reading the results of a study on the risks of dementia caused by extended stays in intensive care
For this study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the team of Dr. Pratik Pandharipande, professor of anesthesiology at the faculty of medicine at Vanderbilt University, in Memphis (Tennessee) followed patients admitted to the intensive care unit of two American hospitals. Of the 821 patients followed, only 6% of them already suffered from some form of mental confusion before being hospitalized. In contrast, 74% of them developed some form of delirium (or mental confusion) during their stay in intensive care.
After 3 months in the hospital, 40% of the patients had a mental capacity similar to that of people who suffered a slight head trauma and 26% suffered from cognitive disorders identical to those of Alzheimer’s disease.
These different cognitive disorders have been analyzed in patients of all ages, whether they are over 65 or under 50. After 12 months in intensive care, 34% of patients still suffered from a slowed down mental capacity and 24% from disorders identical to those of Alzheimer’s disease.
